The need to support pregnant women
“I wish people would have told me about the beautiful development of my little one. If a woman is pregnant, she needs support, not abortion.”
This is the testimony of a woman who committed an abortion recounting how she paid someone to kill her innocent baby, after which her life was never the same again. “Abortion is the death of two – the baby and the mother’s conscience. In law, if a man kills a pregnant woman, he is punished for the death of two people. What are we doing killing our children?”
Another testimony from the USA states that “abortion hadn’t solved my problem; it added to my pain. For years, I denied that abortion was the cause of the pain and deep loss in my soul. I thought: the government made it legal, so must be okay. I was never told that abortion could be damaging by body and that I was taking another human life.”
I speak as a lawyer and as a woman who has very much at heart the care of pregnant women and wish to respond to a recent article by Nils Muiznieks, titled ‘Need to reform abortion law’.
In his article, Muiznieks presents abortion as a right to health. Really, is abortion a right to health? There is a 50% chance of developing breast cancer if you do not carry your baby to full term, because of abruptly stopping the milk production process. Compared to pregnant women who had their babies, pregnant women who aborted were six times more likely to commit suicide. The nine most major complications after an induced abortion are infection, excessive bleeding, embolism, ripping or perforation of the uterus, anaesthesia complications, convulsions, haemorrhaging, cervical injury and endotoxic shock.
While the immediate complications of abortion are usually treatable, these complications frequently lead to long-term reproductive damage of a much more serious nature such as sterility. Finally, since these pregnancy problems pose a threat to the health of the mothers, women who have had abortions face a 58 per cent greater chance of dying during a later pregnancy. How can abortion constitute a sexual and reproductive health service when it damages the woman’s sexual and reproductive health?
What about the psychological effects of abortion? Researchers investigating post-abortion reactions report only one positive emotion: temporary relief. Such feelings of relief are frequently followed by a period psychiatrists identify as emotional “paralysis” or post-abortion “numbness”, inability to express or even feel their own emotions. Data indicates that on average there is a five to ten-year period of denial during which women who are traumatised by their abortion will repress their feelings. During this time, a woman may even become vocally defensive of abortion in order to convince others and herself that she made the right choice, failing to reach a true state of closure.
An increasing number of counsellors report that unacknowledged post-abortion distress is the causative factor in many of their female patients, even though their patients have come to them seeking therapy for seemingly unrelated problems. Other women who would otherwise appear to have been satisfied with their abortion experience, are reported to enter into emotional crises decades later with the onset of menopause or after their youngest child leaves home. Some of the symptoms experienced include feelings of guilt, sleep disturbances, social regression, self-reproach, chronic relationship problems, anxiety attacks, difficulty grieving and difficulty bonding with later children.
Women deserve better. They need to be listened to and supported, to be held while they weep. Women need to be empowered and affirmed in their maternal strength in going through an unplanned pregnancy. Understanding their fears and the unpreparedness for the responsibility of a baby is crucial for them. In Malta abortion is not provided not because it is a taboo, but because we believe in loving the mother and her child. We have support services like Life Line Malta to provide material, emotional and psychological help for crisis pregnancies and even for postabortion hope and healing.
Offering abortion will only break women even further as love and support is the answer, not killing their innocent baby. The abortion industry does not care about you as a person in the least. They claim to be champions for women but they want your money and your silence.